


the story of janie smalls

by indigo_penstrokes



Series: the story of janie smalls [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Gen, Healing, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, its not as bad as those tags make it sound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22781776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigo_penstrokes/pseuds/indigo_penstrokes
Summary: whatever happened to janie smalls?aka i give janie the love and attention she deserves
Series: the story of janie smalls [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1652428
Kudos: 17





	1. the fall

**Author's Note:**

> i was rather upset when i found that nora just used janie as a plot device since there was so much potential for her to be a character that we saw again, and thus this monster was born as my first dip into the aftg fandom
> 
> edit: hi so i edited and basically rewrote most of this since i wasn't happy with it the first time around, so if you've already read it things are different and i highly recommend reading again for those changes

Janie Smalls, starting striker for the Crestwood Blue Devils. Highest scoring striker in school history. All confidence and sharp edges. The makings of a Class I athlete with the potential to go all the way to Court.

Janie Smalls, walking tragedy. Parents killed in a car crash when she was fourteen, her older brother her sole guardian. A spiral of self destructive behaviors that ran unchecked until her best friend Leia recruited her to their high school’s Exy team at the start of their freshman year. Unable to watch Janie destroy herself any more. 

And it worked more than it didn't. For Janie Exy became everything. Her freedom. Her salvation. Her light in the dark.

All of the anger and grief she had turned on herself became her driving force on the court. Pushing herself past her limits, nearly to her body’s breaking point, day after day. With her self destructive determination she became unstoppable, faster and stronger than anyone would have thought possible. She played like she had nothing left to lose, and in a sense she'd already lost it all. Nowhere to go but up.

All that growth was not without its setbacks. Janie fought and fought, losing more than she won at first, but even the smallest victory was a step towards progress. Since a step back for every two forward was better than no steps taken at all. 

And while her battles didn’t keep her from the captainship her junior and senior years they didn't make things any easier when her teammates gave her pitying looks after a relapse. But all that mattered was that Janie was alive and she had made it pretty damn far. All thanks to a bastard sport and her best friend.

Then David Wymack showed up in February of her senior year with an offer she couldn't possibly refuse, and Exy became a chance at a life she never thought she could have: college on a full ride, division I games, five years of doing what she loved most.

Janie started counting the hours until the start of summer practices the moment her pen lifted from the last sheet of her contract. She was going to be a Fox.

For once she wasn’t a failure. She was wanted _._ She was wanted despite her rocky past and all her scars. She was wanted and that alone sent the biggest Fuck You to a universe that only sought to see her fail.

She was getting another chance at life. 

Janie rode that wave of euphoria for a week and a half straight before the world dropped out from beneath her. 

It shouldn't have been a surprise, the highs always came with their catastrophic lows, it was simply science. But that hadn't stopped her from thinking _maybe this time it'll be different, maybe I'm actually getting better._

_Maybe this time it'll last._

But depression is a fickle thing that gorges itself on hopes and dreams, blackening them into nothing more than dust and ash.

Janie found herself in the small empty bathtub in her small empty house. Knees pulled up to her chest and breaths ragged in her lungs. The voices in her head were gnawing away at the emptiness in her heart, making it bigger and bigger. All consuming and never ending.

She wasn’t supposed to make it this far. She was never meant to wear anything other than Crestwood’s blue and grey uniform. There was no version of Janie Smalls who got to wear orange and white. A Janie who took to the Foxhole Court and played like she had nothing to lose and everything to gain. There wasn’t a single version of her that made it out of suburban Virginia and all the way to South Carolina. She would do best to just forget David Wymack. Forget five years of a too good to be true future. She was never meant to make it out of highschool.

Janie Smalls was always meant to be a tragedy. 

Nothing more. Nothing less.

She wrote a letter. Sent apologies to the two people who mattered. Said a quiet goodbye to herself and closed her eyes.

Leia must have found her because she woke up. _She wasn't supposed to wake up._ She woke up surrounded by sterile white and grey walls with heavy bandages on her arms. She woke up screaming.

Her second chance had dripped down the drain no matter how many times they told her how _lucky_ she was. Lucky that Leia had known something was amiss and gone to her. Lucky that she still had enough blood in her body for the doctors to stitch her back together. Lucky, lucky, _lucky._

Was she lucky that she wouldn’t be able to play for weeks, maybe even months depending on how well she could keep her hands from reopening her wounds? Lucky that it would only take that long for her body to be able to handle checks without splitting open? Lucky that she wouldn’t see a court for at least another month and a half?

Was she really lucky to be alive when she had no life left?

An outpatient program was mandatory after her week in the main hospital and few ill fated escape attempts. Janie heard the whispers about her being on suicide watch, but she could have figured that out from the near constant hovering of the nurses. She knew she was a danger to herself, she always had been and always would be. Some things were never meant to change.

 _Typical Fox_ , she thought, and she hadn’t even stepped foot onto the Palmetto court. The hysterical laughter that poured out of her no doubt cemented her spot in the psych ward for the foreseeable future. Her life was well and truly over, she had made sure of that herself the moment she put that blade to her skin.

Time became meaningless. Hours stretched into days that bled into weeks. Every day was the same. Wake up, go to therapy, eat something, take her meds that made the world go grey, go to group therapy, all followed by a weekly check to see how her wounds were healing and that she didn’t have any new ones. She floated through the motions, not getting any better but not getting any worse either. And that was enough apparently since before she knew it her time was up, and she was released back into a world that would never care about people like her. 

No one would ever want the broken pieces of what would have been Janie Smalls, newest striker sub for the Palmetto State Foxes.

But they still released her back into a life that would never be hers with nothing more than a backpack full of clothes and a bottle of pills that clacked balefully in her pocket. 

Leia and Henry were there waiting for her, even if she couldn't look them in the eyes. She couldn’t stand to see their pity, especially Leia’s. Pity from the love of her life was something that would break her if she faced it. So instead she focused on the line of trees that lay just beyond the asphalt parking lot, committing their shapes to memory as Leia tried to take her hand only to be carefully shaken off.

It was hard to believe that only two months ago Leia and Janie had been celebrating their college futures, their future _together_ , and that Henry had watched them like a proud older brother and not the overworked guardian he’d been forced to become. If she tried hard enough Janie thought she could taste strawberry ice cream on her tongue, but it quickly went metallic and sour with more recent memories.

The three of them stood there, unsure and unmoving. The tension in Henry’s shoulders said he was biting back the words Janie’d heard too many times before. Something had changed between them and they both knew it even if they couldn’t put a name to what it was.

In the end it was Leia who moved first, wrapping her arms around Janie like she was worried Janie would disappear for good. She mumbled soft, “I’m sorry,” into Janie’s shoulder. 

The Virginia heat an oppressive force that eventually drove them to the car without another word spoken between them. Though the silence that hung heavy between them said more than enough as the AC spluttered weakly.

“I’m assuming they gave my spot away.” Janie finally asked after a few long minutes of silence, her eyes fixed on the dashboard. She wouldn’t look at either of them until they stopped walking on eggshells. She wasn’t something made of glass that needed to be handled with kid gloves.

“Yes,” Henry said, his voice rough around the edges like he was trying not to cry. “The hospital had to call Wymack and tell him you wouldn’t be able to keep your contract and how it wouldn’t be good for you to even go away at all this soon.”

“Who.” She asked plainly, not even acknowledging the rest of her brother’s statement.

“They aren’t releasing it yet. Something about the player’s anonymity being a top priority.” Leia sounded sour, angry at a nameless player who had swiped Janie’s spot.

Janie nodded. She was too numb to actually give a fuck about losing her only shot at happiness all because she was stupid enough to believe the voices in her head. At least the meds they put her on made it impossible to feel bad about throwing it all away. She couldn't feel much at all really.

Janie spent the rest of her summer at the rec center’s court perfecting rebounds and impossible shots until her arms were dead at her sides and her legs useless beneath her. Leia was always in the goal, her worry worn beneath the bulky goalie pads, but there all the same and it drove Janie to go that much harder. She was not a thing to be worried over as she hurled shot after shot at Leia’s goal with a ferocity that threatened to tear her apart. Janie was anger given a human shape.

Then Leia began her summer practices at Virginia Tech and they moved their practices to the evenings and slipped into VT’s court through an unlocked side door once they were sure no one would find them. It was a last ditch effort for Janie to make up her lost time, but she had already lost too much. There was no way she could come back from this. She was never going to wear PSU orange this season or even the one after it. 

Palmetto State was nothing but a pipedream as she threw her racket across the court and screamed into the empty stadium.

No amount of practice would have her playing by fall.

Fall came and with it a name: _Neil Josten_. 

It was across every news station the second the season started. Unavoidable and ubiquitous.

Janie, surprisingly, didn’t hate him, but then again she couldn’t drag up many feelings that weren’t the anger she directed at herself, and herself alone, and even then those weren’t near strong enough to warrant any outward reaction. But the name set a fire in her bones. He was playing where she should have been. He wasn't Class I material. He was a nobody from a backwater town in Arizona who hadn't played for more than a year. 

He was everything she wasn't.

She let it go. She had to. It was her fault that she lost her second chance, not the rookie who was simply filling a spot that needed to be filled. But still, she dreamed of orange Exy rackets and screaming fans.

Months passed, Janie started classes at NOVA in an attempt to stay on a path that would get her a degree in something she could actually use, even if the idea of living that long made her angry and nauseous. She even joined a local rec team, quickly becoming the best player they’d seen. It didn’t do much against the emptiness she couldn’t seem to rid herself of from her stint in the hospital, but it was better than nothing. 

Then as August cooled into October the Foxes were in the news again. One of their starting strikers was dead. An overdose. 

_Typical of a Fox,_ they all said.

Janie pretended she didn't care, that she didn't have a morbid hope starting to catch in her chest, igniting the emptiness like an oil spill. 

She smothered it down by running her nails across scars, faint lines appearing in the mangled pink skin. A the reminder that she was never getting a spot on that team. Point blank. Period. End of story. Thinking her life could be any other way was madness.

Janie purposely didn't think about it more until spring when her rec season came to an end just as the Foxes had made it to championships. Their rookie had a mouth on him that was going to get them all killed, but at least he was entertaining. She even had to admit he had improved a lot since starting, though she ignored the way that twisted her stomach. They didn't need her. 

She called Wymack anyway. 

“It looks like you could use another striker next season,” Janie said the moment the phone picked up. 

“Are you offering?” Wymack's tone was gruff, but he didn't sound annoyed. It didn't surprise her that he knew exactly who was calling.

“This is me saying I've done nothing but practice since May, I’m better than I’ve ever been.” Janie grinned for the first time in months, hope burning in her chest. “Plus I'd like to meet the mouthy rookie who took my spot.”

Wymack let out a long suffering sigh, as if imagining her meeting Neil. “I’ll think about it, so stay alive until we win championships.”

"Yes Coach."

The line went dead but Janie felt more alive than she had in months. She had a chance.

Then the Foxes did the impossible: they won. They beat Edgar Allan against the odds that said it was impossible.They did everything the world told them they would never be able to,

A week later she got a phone call. 

“Welcome back to Palmetto Janie, I’ll see you in June.”


	2. and the rise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was originally the second half of chapter one, but after numerous edits and other changes it became long enough to get its own chapter so enjoy this very self indulgent look at janie's relationship with the foxes

Adjusting to the Foxes was an uphill struggle Janie hadn’t been ready for. The original nine weren’t closed off to their new teammates exactly, but a good number of them weren’t that welcoming either. She quickly learned that the less time she spent at Fox Tower the better since the other first years weren’t all that fond of her either. It wasn’t a surprise that she was dubbed an outsider, not with her four year contract and strange series of circumstances that lead to said shortened contract.

It also didn’t help that she never went out of her way to talk with them outside of practice, and then if any of them did talk with her she responded in clipped sentences and single word answers. It was soon that her short temper and sharp tongue became her defining features in the eyes of her teammates. Though she had no one to blame but herself. Anger was what she knew best, it was how she played, and how she kept the world at bay. So maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing now that the others were more than keen on giving her the space she needed, if not a bit lonesome. It was in these stretches of solitude that Janie found herself toying with the necklace Leia had given her before they both left for summer conditioning; a single silver pawprint that paired Leia’s bird feather charm. It was corny as hell, but they had both cried when Janie opened the gift box.

Renee was the first to see past her sharp exterior, giving Janie kind words that said the team would be there for her the moment she decided to let them in. Janie had scoffed, but found herself hanging around the goal keeper much more after that. Though it was hardly ever with the rest of the team present, the only notable occasion was when Renee invited Janie to have lunch with her, Dan, and Allison, the latter asking more questions than Janie was strictly comfortable with. It had been a strange afternoon to say the least, filled with many silent conversations between the upperclassmen that Janie couldn’t even begin to understand, and Allison critiquing her fashion sense which was mostly faded shirts, flannels and baggy ripped jeans. It had been a  _ very  _ strange afternoon.

Janie thought Renee’s ability to get under her shielding might have had something to do with Renee’s honestly baffling friendship with Andrew Minyard, who had taken one look at Janie, cocked his head to the side, and then walked away without so much as a word to her. The encounter left her feeling like she’d failed some sort of assessment and had her avoiding any further interaction with the apathetic goalie outside of practices.

Janie found herself calling Leia more often than she thought she would, meaning she was adjusting about as well as the shrinks had thought she would, so not very well. She would be left barely holding herself together after a practice where Kevin and Dan had run them into the ground, or after a backhand remark made by the other first year strikers that hit just a little too close for her to shrug it off. Sometimes she just needed a voice of reason against the urging whispers in her head when the night’s got just a little too dark. But no matter the reason Leia was always there, a rock in the churning ocean of Janie’s upended life, with her soothing words and a new story about her own team’s shenanigans. Sometimes Janie wished she’d followed Leia to Virginia Tech, just so she wouldn’t have to bear the three hundred miles between them. But on these calls, with her back against the sun warmed concrete of Fox Tower and her breaths coming easier she knew she had made the right choice, and she would be all the better for it. And as they say, distance makes the heart grow fonder.

Classes started up without as much fanfare as Janie would have expected from a school like Palmetto, but it was a pleasant surprise. She threw herself full force into her classes, with her transfer NOVA gen ed credits she was able to jump right in to her major classes, her favourite thus far being her poetry and prose lecture. 

With the start of classes came the start of the new Exy season, and it was pure luck that their first game was against Virginia Tech, Janie was sure of it. There was no way things worked out that perfectly in her life. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about being on the opposite side of the court from Leia outside of their summer practices, but it was going to be a game to remember that was for sure. She was marked to be the first sub in, so she would be getting a nearly exhausted Leia when she stepped onto the court. Hopefully she would score a point or two, just so she could see Leia get worked up over it. She was grateful just to be seeing Leia at all.

The game was a home one thankfully, so Janie didn’t have an entire bus ride to work herself into an inevitable spiral of  _ I’m not supposed to be here. _ But the words cycled through her head all the same as she changed out in the Foxes’ locker room, surrounded by suffocating orange and white. She methodically wrapped her arms the same way she had throughout highschool. Back then she’d been hiding, ashamed of her visible reminder of her missteps, but now it was a simple comfort, a safety net against her traitorous thoughts. She methodically braided her hair, each twist and tuck grounding her in reality.  _ She was here. She was needed. She belonged. _ With the second braid tied off Janie easily pulled on the rest of her gear, wondering idly if they had kept it from the year previous or if it was all new since she hadn’t actually made it to the court last June. She did her best to leave those thoughts behind as she grabbed her helmet and gloves and started for the inner court, falling in just behind Renee, who gave her a soft smile before they entered the court.

The roar of the crowd was enough to send bolts of adrenaline through Janie’s body. 

This was real. She was here. She wasn’t dreaming. She had made it.

Those thoughts echoed louder than any of her doubts as they made it through warmups, and before she could blink the starting lines were being called to the court floor. Janie almost missed when the VT lineup was rounded off with the announcer calling out “and he’s followed out by second year goalie, number thirteen, Leia Apke!” The butterflies that burst to life in her chest were distracting enough that she managed to watch the entire first quarter of the game without concentrating on anything that wasn’t Leia blocking nearly all the shots on her goal. She didn’t even hear the jabs Jack and Helen were making as she watched the game with stars in her eyes. She was only shaken free when she got subbed in for Kevin and had to pull her helmet on.

_ This was all real and she was so very alive. _

Janie jogged onto the court, racket in her hand and fire in her heart. Leia was in the opposing goal, wearing a smile bright enough that Janie could see it through the grating of her helmet. She made a detour to that side of the court, much to the confusion of her teammates and the displeasure of the refs. She ignored their shouts to get to her spot as she picked up her pace.

She pulled to a stop barely outside the goal box, just a little breathless and smirking. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself.” Leia was leaning against her racket like they had all the time in the world. “Try not to make me look too bad out there.” She nodded out towards the rest of the court.

Janie let out a small laugh. “I can’t make any promises.”

Leia was smiling and looking at Janie like she couldn’t actually believe they were there, on the same court, together again. Words hung unspoken from her smiling lips and Janie moved as fast as she dared, hooking her gloved fingers into Leia’s mask to press their foreheads together. She barely had time to breathe a soft “I love you” before she was sprinting to her starting position. She would have to explain that later, there was no way in hell the Foxes would let her leave it be, but for now all she wanted to focus on was playing to the halftime buzzer and using all the adrenaline that pumped through her veins. 

Janie was grinning like a lunatic as she stopped on the halfcourt line. She looked over to Neil, who wore an expression not unlike hers, though there was a shine to his eyes that made her think he knew exactly what had transpired down by the Tech goal. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling, being that exposed to none other than Neil Josten who didn’t miss a thing. 

He gave her a short nod and before she could blink the buzzer sounded and they were off running.

Janie’s heart  _ soared. _

In the end they won, 8-3. Janie scored on Leia twice out of the three shots she took, but that could’ve been chalked up to the fact she knew how Leia played and where her weak spots were (upper left corner followed closely by the area near her left foot). Either way she scored more points than the other first years and that alone made her feel like she was flying as she joined the post game swarm once the subs were allowed on the court. The noise of everyone was almost too much, but it was nothing compared to the fact that she had just won her first Division I game and she wasn’t dreaming. Her dreams had never been this detailed or rambunctious. 

“So Smalls, what was that bit you pulled with Tech’s goalie?” Nicky chirped as they slowly tried to move their celebration off the court, all overflowing with that intoxicating post win energy. 

Janie was amped up on enough endorphins that she didn’t find it odd that he felt comfortable enough to outright ask her about it, and she found she didn’t mind giving a cheeky answer and lopsided smile in return. “What do you think it was?”

Nicky just grinned wider, something that meant she had probably just won him one of the Foxes many bets. She swore they were like a school of piranhas when it came to betting on their fellow teammates; no one was safe.

Nicky opened his mouth to respond, but closed it with a smirk when he saw something past Janie’s shoulder. 

Janie just had enough time to turn and recognize the short figuring racing towards her as Leia. Leia who was running at a full sprint, helmet and racket discarded somewhere near the far goal, and wearing a smile brighter than the court lights. Janie dropped her own racket and helmet just as Leia launched herself into Janie’s arms, face pressed safely in the junction of her neck and shoulder. 

It was pure muscle memory as Janie wrapped her arms around Leia’s chest, shifting their combined weight into something that wouldn’t knock them both over. She forgot how well they fit together like that: Leia with her legs wrapped around Janie’s hips and her arms around Janie’s shoulders. They became a single maroon and orange entity, no one would be able to tell where the striker began and where the goalie ended. This was what home felt like; Leia in her arms, Exy all around her, and an actual future stretched out in front of her.

“You were amazing out there,” Leia whispered, voice rough where it was muffled in Janie’s neck guard.

“And you still favor the right side of your goal,” Janie teased, too amped up for romantics. 

Leia laughed, pulling her face back to look at Janie, to truly look at her for the first time in months with no face guards in the way. Her gaze was so full of love that all Janie could do was look right back. Taking in everything from the way her dark hair curled around her temples from sweat, and the freckles that stood out against her soft brown skin, to the face splitting smile that made Janie weak at the knees.

“You’re staring,” Janie whispered, barely heard over the din of the court.

“So are you.” Leia’s smile shifted into something more mischievous, the dimple in her left cheek appearing. 

Janie knew she would never hear the end of it, but she closed the last breath of space between them. Time turned to syrup around them, the world dropping away until it was just the two of them. They kissed short and sweet, hungry for more but painfully aware they had an audience, and just like that it was over. The world coming back into sharp focus around them. Wymack was shouting over the noise and it sounded like VT’s coach was yelling too, but neither girl moved for another few heartbeats.

“You should probably put me down now,” Leia said, but the look in her eyes said she wanted nothing more than to stay in Janie’s arms forever.

“I probably should.” Janie snuck another quick peck before she lowered Leia back to her feet, grinning when her girlfriend was back to being four inches shorter than her. 

“Your team’s waiting for you.” Leia nodded slightly behind Janie, and it took all of Janie’s willpower to school her features into something more like her usual resting face, but a smile still managed to rip it all away.

“I bet they are.” Janie ran a gloved hand through Leia’s curls before dropping a kiss to the crown of her head, savoring the feeling since she had no idea when she’d get to have Leia like this again. 

Leia gave her a small shove when Janie still hadn’t stepped away. “Go on you giant sap, they’re looking at me like I’m an alien.” 

Janie let herself be pushed, but she didn’t turn around until Leia was safely in the midst of her team. And when she did she was met with almost a dozen disbelieving stares. She quickly wiped the remnants of her smile from her face.

“What?” She snapped, but without the bite it would have usually held mostly due to the flush she felt overtaking her face, and let it be known that Janie Smalls did not blush lightly, it turned her entire face into a tomato. It was almost embarrassing. Almost.

“I don’t think we’ve seen you emote anything that  _ positive _ since you got here,” Matt answered only to earn an elbow in the side from Dan. 

“And it’s all you’re going to see of it.” Janie just picked up her racket and helmet, and when most of her team still hadn’t moved into the locker rooms she asked, “So how many bets did I just win for people?” 

“One for me,” Allison said, looking rather smug.

“And one for me,” Nicky chimed in. 

Janie had a feeling she could puzzle out what the bets were if she tried, but she didn’t want to ruin her mood so she didn’t. Instead she simply followed Renee and Helen back to the lockers for a much needed shower. 

Once she was back in her sweats and flannel Janie checked her phone. It blinked with a text from Leia that read  _ call me when you get home <3. _ The smile that crept its way onto her face was small and true, and stayed there the entire ride back to Fox Tower, through even Allison’s nearly invasive questions about Leia and Renee’s slightly unnerving quiet. 

Janie stayed outside when the other Foxes raced to celebrate, claiming she needed the air, not that any of them believed her. It was strange how they went from seeming to not care what she did to wanting to include her in things in less than a day. Her head was still reeling a bit from that as she tried to figure out where she stood in the scheme of things yet again. But all of that was easy to forget once she dialed a familiar number that picked up on the second ring. 

Janie closed her eyes and let the familiarity of everything wash over her; the sticky warm night, Leia’s voice through her phone, the memory of Leia’s lips on her own. And, as she leaned against Fox Tower with the stars shining above her, Janie thought that maybe this was what the start of getting better felt like. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for anyone curious: Janie is an english major, and the bets in place were about Janie's sexuality (the one Allison won) and an inpromtu one about who the VT goalie was to Janie (the one Nicky won)

**Author's Note:**

> comments will make my day so let me know what you thought! i might consider continuing this or writing more pieces with Janie and Leia if you guys show enough interest  
> find me on tumblr @ad-astra-de-luna


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